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Category Archives: US genealogy

Gold Star Houses

While preparing an architectural history presentation I am delivering for Barrington Preservation Society’s plaque program this week, I learned from my co-researcher on our plaque committee that this house we are studying was that of a bomber pilot killed in action in World War II (pictured; he lived there with his wife and mother-in-law, who […]

New trim paint

New trim paint in the east parlor, General Thomas Allin House. My grandfather’s framing hammer is holding up the sash on the left.

looking for a leg up

Here’s a photo of my current obsession: This man outlived his leg almost 47 years, and is buried far away. I’m putting together an essay on the man, the leg, and what it all means. I’ve been asking around: does anyone know of other similar stones?

new fasg.org website is up

One of my engrossing summer projects has been updating the website for the American Society of Genealogists, fasg.org. Well, it has been up (and stable) for a few days now. I have learned (and re-learned) a lot of new web skills, and might even use some of them on this site — who knows?

“Looking at graves? Count me in!”

That’s what my four-year-old said when I told him (somewhat apologetically) where we were going. A chance encounter had led me to discover four new ancestors of my wife, who lie in the small burying ground by the beautiful Bradford Center meeting house in Bradford, New Hampshire, only five miles (by a dirt track through […]

serendipity in a basement evidence-room

Two weeks ago I attended my first annual meeting of the American Society of Genealogists, meeting several of the other Fellows for the first time. Five days after coming home, I was in the dim, cavernous basement of the Registry of Deeds of Bristol County, Massachusetts, when someone approached me to fight over an index […]

a past ‘distant and unknown’? — a clipping from the loft

A fine Father’s Day gift was time to putter in the attic, pulling down pine planks (some flooring and some wall planks) that had been repurposed as ceiling furring, being nailed to the underside of the tie beams to support a modern lath & plaster ceiling in the west end. Above the tie beams lay […]

Fragments of Taylor history

Just found out the Hartford Herald (Hartford, Ohio County, Kentucky) is online in beautiful images as part of the Library of Congress “Chronicling America” database of historic newspapers. This led me to download all 45-odd installments of Harrison D. Taylor’s serial column “Fragments of the Early History of Ohio County,” which ran from April 1877 […]

a living six-generation matriline

Genealogically amazing, from ABC News, via Huffington Post: a 111-year-old great-great-great-grandmother posed for a photograph with her seven-week old great-great-great-granddaughter, and the four generations of daughters in between. Are other examples of six living generations readily found, present or past?

Taylor genealogy updated — marking genetically tested lines in a traditional genealogy

I just uploaded a new version of my e-book An American Taylor Family, which incorporates some revisions which have been on my ‘to-do’ list for over a year! This post is not just self-congratulatory, however, it’s to draw attention (my own as well as anyone’s who might read this) to a feature which I haven’t […]